Ensuring diversity of national energy scenarios: Bottom-up energy system model with Modeling to Generate Alternatives

Abstract

Long-range energy scenarios are commonly used to inform national energy policy decisions. Although the scenario approach aims to expand the spectrum of futures considered, in the past energy scenarios have not been diverse enough to include less expected real-world developments. We use a bottom-up energy system model EXPANSE with Modeling to Generate Alternatives (MGA) to assess the diversity of the existing ensemble of multi-organization, multi-model Swiss electricity supply scenarios. We show that both for 2035 and 2050 existing scenarios cover well the various possibilities in deployment of individual electricity generation technologies in terms of installed capacity or produced electricity. When analyzing scenarios as a whole, we find that in 2035 there is a lack of scenarios with high electricity demand and greater deployment of renewable technologies occurring simultaneously, as well as scenarios with a negligible or negative share of net electricity import. In 2050, there is also a lack of scenarios that depict high electricity demand and conservative deployment of new renewable technologies, especially solar PV. We propose six additional scenarios to be included to increase the diversity of the ensemble of Swiss electricity supply scenarios and achieve better understanding of the future possibilities and uncertainties.

Perspectives of Informed Citizen Panel on Low-Carbon Electricity Portfolios in Switzerland and Longer-Term Evaluation of Informational Materials

“…In the workshops, we used an interactive web-tool Riskmeter (www.riskmeter.ch, Figure 2) that we developed to build a Swiss electricity portfolio in 2035 under technology and energy resource constraints 60 . The Riskmeter required the manipulation of electricity produced by each technology in TWh/year to meet the Swiss electricity demand of 70 TWh/year in 2035.…”

“…In the case of nuclear, the minimum was set to zero because the Swiss Energy Strategy 2050 54 foresees stepwise nuclear phaseout in Switzerland to 2035. The maximum potential of each technology due to resource or technical constraints was also set and could not be exceeded by the Riskmeter users 60 . If the users aimed to produce more electricity in Switzerland than is needed annually, the net export value was calculated.…”

Impacts of an Increased Substitution of Fossil Energy Carriers with Electricity-Based Technologies on the Swiss Electricity System

“…In existing studies, typically bottom-up energy system (optimization) models are used to investigate the future Swiss energy system based on given targets in the ES2050 [16,[23][24][25][26][27]. These models rely on forecasts and fixed scenarios of the whole energy system and use cost optimization to generate cost-optimal energy scenarios under technological, resource, environmental, and/or policy constraints [23].…”

“…In existing studies, typically bottom-up energy system (optimization) models are used to investigate the future Swiss energy system based on given targets in the ES2050 [16,[23][24][25][26][27]. These models rely on forecasts and fixed scenarios of the whole energy system and use cost optimization to generate cost-optimal energy scenarios under technological, resource, environmental, and/or policy constraints [23]. For the Swiss energy system, there are models with a high (mostly hourly) temporal resolution, but only in the electricity sector [24,28,29]; and models with a distinction between the electricity, heat and mobility sector, but only at a coarse (weekly, monthly) temporal resolution [25,26] or only with typical (averaged) days per season [27].…”

Research of Long-Term Development of Integrated Energy Systems with Combinatorial Modelling Methods

“…However, this approach is subject to human cognition biases and social effects at play in the group, which may interfere to explore the uncertainty [12]. Alternative approaches ensure diversity of scenarios constructed [13] or focus on determining the vulnerability of strategies to the uncertainty [14], or by combining both [15].…”